1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a printer, and in particular, to a printer comprising a holding member which holds a print medium to be printed on and an inkjet head which executes printing on the print medium held by the holding member by discharging ink.
2. Related Art
An inkjet printer on the market today generally comprises a color inkjet head including a number of inkjet nozzles. Such an inkjet printer is designed to execute color printing by discharging inks of multiple colors from the inkjet nozzles onto a print medium (paper, etc.) of a desired size according to printing data while moving the inkjet head to and fro in a main scanning direction (parallel to the direction of printing) and by successively shifting the inkjet head in a sub scanning direction orthogonal to the main scanning direction (line feed).
For example, in an inkjet printer described in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2002-234188 (page 4, FIG. 1) (hereinafter referred to as a “document #1”), a carriage on which an inkjet head is mounted to face downward is configured to be movable in the horizontal direction and a desired image is formed on paper being fed by a feeding roller by discharging ink downward from the inkjet head onto the paper.
The inkjet printer of the document #1 further comprises an ink receiving member (for receiving ink discharged from the inkjet head for the flushing of the inkjet head) which is placed to face the inkjet head at the far right of a platen. Therefore, when the flushing is executed at the start of printing or in the middle of printing, the inkjet head has to be withdrawn to a maintenance position facing the ink receiving member.
Meanwhile, a variety of printing techniques have been proposed for printing patterns, designs, etc. on various types of fabrics, and there have also been proposed inkjet printers capable of printing patterns, designs, etc. on a surface of fabric by discharging color inks from the inkjet nozzles onto the fabric according to printing data while moving the inkjet head relative to the fabric in an X direction and a Y direction orthogonal to each other.
For example, in a printer described in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. HEI05-84887 (pages 2-3, FIG. 2, FIG. 3) (hereinafter referred to as a “document #2”), a Y-movement bar is held to be movable in a Y direction along grooves formed on both lateral faces of a machine frame which is formed in a U-shape in the plan view, an X-movement arm is supported to be movable along the Y-movement bar, an inkjet head is attached to the end of the X-movement arm, and a fabric holding frame holding fabric to be printed on is mounted and fixed on a table placed at the center of the machine frame. In the printer, the inkjet head executes printing on the fixed fabric by discharging ink according to printing data while moving in the X and Y directions.
However, the aforementioned printers involve the following problems. The size of the inkjet printer of the document #1 is necessitated to be large especially in the printing direction since the ink receiving member (for receiving ink discharged for the flushing of the inkjet head) has to be placed at a particular flushing position (outside a printing range) at the far right of the platen.
Also when such an ink receiving member is installed in the printer of the document #2, the ink receiving member has to be placed outside the fabric holding frame in order to prevent the fabric (held by the fabric holding frame) from being smeared with ink. With the long moving distance of the inkjet head in the printing direction, the enlargement of the printer is inevitable.
While the printer of the document #2 is designed to execute printing on the fixed fabric by moving the inkjet head in the X and Y directions orthogonal to each other, such a printer may also be configured to execute the printing by moving the fabric holding frame (holding the fabric) in the X and Y directions relative to an inkjet head placed at a fixed position. In this case, the flushing can be carried out by moving the inkjet head (which is fixed during the printing) from a printing position (close to the fabric) to a maintenance position (above the printing position) and thereafter moving a maintenance mechanism including the ink receiving member in a horizontal direction to let the ink receiving member face the inkjet head at the maintenance position.
However, such a flushing operation requires the elevation of the inkjet head and the horizontal movement of the maintenance mechanism to be performed in cooperation with each other. Therefore, the flushing operation takes a long maintenance time and that delays the printing process.